Washington court setback for FilmOn

A group of broadcasters has won a preliminary injunction against web TV service FilmOn in a federal court in Washington DC. Judge Rosemary Collyer said: “This Court concludes that the Copyright Act forbids FilmOn X from retransmitting Plaintiffs’ copyrighted programs over the Internet. Plaintiffs are thus likely to succeed on their claim that FilmOn X violates Plaintiffs’ exclusive public performance rights in their copyrighted works.”

FilmOn CEO Alki David said the service would continue without the Networks and appeal, which he was confident of winning.

Fox, one of the plaintiffs, said: “We are pleased, but not surprised that the court recognised that the commercial retransmission of our broadcast signal without permission or compensation is a clear violation of the law. This decision should finally put the matter to rest, and will hopefully discourage other illegal services from attempting to steal our content.”

The broadcasters filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against FilmOn on May 23 seeking the injunction. David countersued, suggesting that the networks were trying to abandon their responsibilities to the American public.